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group.
For the desi gang led by Hardjit, rudeboy rules matter much
more than religion and ethnicity. This is exemplified by Jas’
detailed explanation of the seven rudeboy rules, which include:
“stay outta trouble with the police” (rule #3) and have “the
blingest mobile fone” (rule #2) because “fones were invented for
rudeboys” (Malkani, 2006a: 40-41). And yet, although Jas has
tried to stick to most of the rudeboy rules, he is kicked out of the
gang at the end of the novel because he is found out to have
secretly dated the Muslim girl, Samira Ahmed, who, gorgeous as
she is, is disliked by the desi rudeboys. She is disliked because
Samira’s easy attitude in chatting and hanging around with guys
makes it “too easy for her to break other rules an slip into being
the way they din’t want any desi sister to be
—
whether she was
Muslim, Sikh or Hindu” (2006a: 64). This emphasis on the
rudeboy rules signifies two points. First of all, by detailing the
rudeboy rules, the novel provides a groundbreaking portrayal of
the rudeboy subculture that transcends ethnicity and religion. The
novel can thus be distinguished from other immigrant fictions that
may similarly deal with second-generation immigrant issues, such
as Zadie Smith’s
White Teeth
(2000). As Graham claims in “‘This
In’t Good Will Hunting,’”
Londonstani
could be argued to be “the
first novel to present the world of British Asian rudeboys to
mass-market audience” (2008b: para. 13). Secondly, the rudeboy
rules demonstrate how gender plays an equally, if not more,
important role than ethnicity in shaping a desi’s identity. On the
one hand, as discussed previously, the rudeboys represented in the
novel are mommy’s boys in that their attachment to their mothers
decides, or influences, who they are and how they behave. On the
other hand, even though they show respect to their mothers, they
appear to have limited and overly conservative views of girls,
leading them, especially the most macho, Hardjit, to discriminate
against Samira, no matter whether she is a Muslim, Sikh or Hindu.
All in all, the rudeboy subculture in the novel demonstrates that